In my mid-20s, I was in an e-fed (online pro wrestling fan fiction, more or less). I'd been in the fed for a few years, won a few mid-tier titles, but never really gotten to that top billing / world title class. As it happens, someone had randomly beaten the world champ in a non-title match, and then I happened to beat that person in a match the following week. Well, by my booking logic, if I beat the guy who beat the world champ, that should at least get me a match with the champ, maybe even a title shot. And so I did, and I did. For the first time, I had a legit shot at the World Title.

I put a lot of work into that RP. I wrote multiple scenes, both on and off screen, cut a nice promo, and did some serious storytelling with the background of my character and how he had gotten to this point. My opponent (and no grudge with him, we're still good friends to this day) wrote one giant wall of text in one long, rambling, blah-blah-blah in-ring promo, and that was it. Word count isn't supposed to count for much, but even if it did, mine had his beat by a couple hundred words - as well as being far more nuanced and interesting to read.

I did not win.

Not only did I not win, but when they wrote the results of the match, I was pretty much an afterthought. The whole thing was used as a vehicle for someone else to make a run-in and start a whole new storyline that had nothing to do with me. And I mean, I get it, sometimes that's how wrestling booking is - but in something that's supposed to be a writing competition, a pre-fixed ending like that should only be done when both parties know about it and agree ahead of time. I deserved to win that World Title, and the way that one was treated pretty much turned off my give-a-fuck-o-meter for the rest of my fedding career. I did go on to finally win the title a couple years later with a different character, but mostly because all the "big name" writers had left the fed and I happened to still be around.

The owner of the fed was and still is a great friend, and I never really brought up my gripe about it. Just didn't seem worth causing real life drama over a silly wrestling game that barely anyone in the world besides those of us who wrote for it paid any attention to. But still, I put in a lot of work and I was proud as hell of that work, and to see it cast aside with no explanation, just sucked.